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Scores of new entries, however, demonstrate the extent to which rotten cliches and cute formulations can worm their way into acceptance. A celebutante, for example, is someone who seeks the limelight through association with celebrities; to Mirandize (verb), as in "Mirandize the perpetrator," refers to the Miranda rule that requires cops to warn arrestees (noun) of their legal rights. As might be expected, the ungrammatical use of hopefully ("Hopefully we will get to the show on time") receives Random's blessing: "Although some strongly object . . . ((hopefully)) is standard in all varieties of speech and writing."
Even the word Webster's has succumbed to the loose use of language. Though Noah Webster produced his first American dictionary in 1806, his name never appeared in the title of his editions until after his death. Webster's has since passed into generic usage, and any publisher can slap the word into the titles of its own lexicons.
The reluctance of Random House's editors to make tough, perhaps even unpopular, judgments is an ominous sign. It encourages the self-appointed watchdogs who bark at purported offenses and demand revisions that often border on the ridiculous. Their concern is not only a desire to expel genuinely vicious or hateful words from the vocabulary; their activity is calculated mainly to protect the sensitivities of minority groups, even from objectionable phrases that bear little or no relationship to discrimination or racism. What counts, say the watchdogs, is not the origin of a term but how a person feels about it. Hence waitron.
If these watchdogs get their way, other words and phrases, now listed approvingly by Random House, may suffer the same baroque fate. For example, some feminists have objected to the word seminal, which refers to something that is original and influential. They argue that seminal, like seminar and seminary, fails the gender-neutral test because it derives from semen, the Latin word for seed. So much for logic.
It is just as well that the English language, so welcoming to precision and so rich with metaphor and vitality, continues to be a growing wonder. Like many living things, it needs constant pruning to flourish. The Random House version of Webster's too could use some pruning -- or maybe a good watch repairperson.